


what about our dead

by orphan_account



Series: Commissions [3]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 21:19:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5180108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Anteiku Raid, Takizawa and Hide are both captured by Aogiri. They both undergo the surgery to turn them into half-ghouls, but Hide is left weakened and nearly dead. The two of them must escape from the Aogiri base if Hide is to survive. Unfortunately, Eto is a few steps ahead of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kammy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kammy/gifts).



> A commission for Kammy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what about our dead, what do we do/ with them, we have to turn them in-/ to something, right?  
> Mine/ never came back, mine keep coming/ back, please, I beg you, open/ your eyes, please,  
> open your mouth or let me/ open it, please, there’s something I need/ to taste.  
> \--from “pulse (hidden bird)” by Nick Flynn

Takizawa watched Hide sleep for three days. The two of them were confined to a makeshift hospital room cordoned off from a large warehouse by standing screens. Hide slept, and Takizawa watched the growth seeping out of the wound on his face. He also watched Kanou’s nurse, who arrived several times a day to check on the drip of fluid connected to Hide’s wrist and clean the cut on his face and change his bandages. Hide was dressed all in bandages. His right arm had been amputated and what remained of his flesh there was wrapped tightly in bandages, as was the stump of his right leg. Takizawa had seen the nurse pull back the sheets to reveal Hide’s waist, wrapped up in bandages as the wound on his right side healed. 

He could also see, when the nurse lifted the sheets, the cuffs that chained Hide to the bed. They matched those that Takizawa wore: thick, quinque-steel handcuffs.It was clear, to Takizawa, that there was no escaping. Even if he were to escape the chains, he would have to run through the middle of the cathedral-like room that housed Kanou’s laboratory. He would have to run through a room with no adequate cover towards an escape he couldn’t locate. Even if he made it out of the warehouse-like laboratory, he didn’t know what steps towards escape were necessary afterwards, nor who might be guarding him. He was trapped in the hideout of the most dangerous ghoul organization in the city, possibly in the world, and there was no way he could fight his way out empty-handed and weakened as he was.

Soon Takizawa began to wonder whether Hide would ever wake up. He wasn’t sure how many days it had been since he had been abducted by Aogiri, but since he had woken up Hide had been asleep for about three days. He just watched the growth overtaking the side of Hide’s face like the ocean rising at high tide and suffocating the shore. The growth was blood red like a kagune but ruddy in texture. It climbed Hide’s face from the wound in the middle of his cheek. It reached the corner of his eye now, and Takizawa wondered what would happen once it began to grow over the soft, vulnerable tissues of Hide’s eye.

  


……

  


On the fourth day, the One-Eyed Owl came. She was a small woman with bushy hair dressed in a purple-red cloak. Takizawa believed her when she said who she was, because as she spoke to him she let a huge, gnarled kagune unfurl from her shoulders. It was unlike any kagune Takizawa had ever seen: from its tendrils grew hands and mouths that whispered. Their words were indiscernible, but Takizawa could hear a current of pain in their strangled voices. He believed her because it was clear who had the upper hand.

She took him away and she taught him a lesson: the kagune emerges under stress. First she cut his skin and the kagune burst from his back. Then she cut his skin to watch him heal. She cut his throat and watched as the skin knitted itself back together. Before it did, however, he flailed on the floor choking on his own blood. But the skin did grow back together: Takizawa was strong. 

The One-Eyed Owl taught him a lesson that day: he could toe the line of death and pull himself back just by the tenacity of his own body. This was what she called his “training.”

“I gave you this gift,” she told him.

  


…...

  


Her name was Eto and she liked to feed him. Eto chained him to the floor in a small square room and brought him meat in a bloodstained bucket. His wrists were chained behind his back, so she fed him from her fingers. First, he was hungry, and the meat was rich and satisfying between his teeth. Then his stomach began to ache as she fed him more. She fed him so much that he couldn’t sit up straight, and he curled in on himself in pain. Blood stuck to his chin and dribbled down his torso, staining his hospital gown.

“This is ghoul meat,” Eto told him as she emptied the first bucket. Nausea gripped his stomach and he fought the urge to vomit. He knew that if he did the feeding would only go on longer, and in all likelihood she would leave him there for hours in his own vomit. “I’m going to make you a kakuja,” she explained simply. “First, the brilliant Dr. Kanou makes you a one-eyed ghoul like me, and then it’s my turn to train you. That’s why I hurt you. It’s all part of the training to make you stronger. Kanou says he did wonderful work on you, and I’ve taken it upon myself to make you the best.”

After that she left him for some time. Takizawa had no way to gauge how long she left him chained there, but the pain in his stomach had subsided by the time she returned with another bucket full of meat. He had curled his body into the fetal position on the cold concrete of the floor, but as she entered he scrambled to sit up as quickly as he could with his hands chained as they were. His stomach was still distended from the previous feeding, but he knew he had to brace himself for more coming. 

Eto began to feed him the meat. As she worked, she talked. “Kanou says that Kaneki Ken is his masterpiece. Do you agree, Seidou?” she asked him. His mouth was stuffed with meat, but in any case she hadn’t expected a response. “I don’t agree with him. I think you’re the best he’s ever made, and I can make you so, so much better than Kaneki Ken. We can do that together, by training like this.” Takizawa swallowed, and she stroked his cheek with her small, cold fingers. Blood from her hand trailed onto his face. 

“Together,” she whispered gently.


	2. hope

Hide dreamed that he was young and sitting in the grass at the edge of a park. Kaneki stood at a distance and Hide could see that he was the Kaneki he had known as a child: all shaggy black hair and jutting bones under his loose clothing. Hide couldn’t see his eyes, but he knew how they should be: so bright and focused that Hide smiled nearly every time Kaneki turned to look at him. As he watched Kaneki in his dream he smiled so broadly it hurt his face. His entire body ached with love.

Kaneki began to draw closer. He was was soft at the edges with the yellow-white haze of dreams, but as he neared Hide he grew more solid, more definitely black at the edges. He drew closer and closer until he eclipsed everything else in Hide’s vision and all Hide could see was Kaneki, huge and looming, and he wasn’t a child anymore: his hair was white and his face was half a mask of kagune and his face was bright with hunger. 

After that Hide dreamed of nothing.

  


…...

  


A man with white hair deposited Takizawa and Hide in a room that looked just like the room where Eto fed Takizawa: small, square, concrete, and sealed off with a heavy steel door. But in this room there was a bucket and a pile of blankets as bedding, plus a pair of pants and a shirt, presumably for Takizawa. The man, Tatara as Eto had called him, carried Hide over his shoulder to the cell. Hide was still limp and bandaged, but the nurse had removed his IV and catheter before Tatara took him to the cell. Takizawa understood that they were giving up on him.

Takizawa could have attempted an attack on Tatara on the way to the cell; he was growing stronger, and with Eto’s guidance he could control his kagune. But Hide’s vulnerability stopped him: he didn’t want him caught in the crossfire. Takizawa was still hoping he would not die. 

When Tatara left them in the cell the first thing Takizawa did was fold the blankets into a bed for Hide and gently settle his body down. Takizawa could feel that the floor was sticky with filth beneath his bare feet, and he didn’t want Hide’s wounds getting infected. Then he changed out of his filthy hospital gown and donned the loose gray sweatpants and the shirt left for him. 

Hide did not wake up that day. Eto came and took Takizawa away for his training--his torture--and when he returned Hide had still not awoken. Takizawa was losing hope.

  


…….

  


Hide was underwater. Water swamped his lungs; he tried to breathe and water gurgled down his throat and burned his windpipe. He could see light far above him, but the water was very dark and the light was distant and hazy. It was his only chance for oxygen, however, so he began to move towards it. As he neared it, he saw that the light was very red, like watching the sun through closed eyelids. He was in it now, treading through water tinged with reddened light, but there was still no oxygen.

Hide woke coughing. He instinctively rolled onto his stomach and immediately felt hot liquid coursing past his lips. He coughed desperately to clear the blood from his throat. His chest and lungs burned, but eventually he had cleared the liquid from his lungs and he panted raspily through a sore windpipe. Tears collected at the corners of his eyes. He was looking down at a puddle of blood and mucus on a concrete floor.

Someone was above him, gently turning him over and helping him into a sitting position. Hide realized that he was seated on a pad of blankets in a dim gray room. A man knelt in front of him. He had unkempt white hair and blood staining to his cheeks. 

“Takizawa?” Hide rasped. He coughed again. He was very, very thirsty. Takizawa just looked at him. His face was blank. 

Hide tried to move his arms and legs to test to make sure nothing was broken. He looked down at his body and could hardly believe what he was seeing: his arm and his leg ended in stumps swaddled in white bandages.

“Where am I?” Hide asked. Panic began to swell in his body and tears returned to his eyes. “Takizawa...where am I? Where’s Kaneki? What’s going on?” The last thing he could remember was the feeling of Kaneki’s teeth in digging into his body and then his mind tumbling into darkness. He recalled dreams, too, dreams of water and Kaneki that were turning to haze in his memory. He grasped at them but couldn’t catch them as they dissipated. 

“Aogiri,” Takizawa said. He coughed and cleared his throat, and then spoke again: “We’ve been captured by Aogiri. We both went through surgeries to make us into ghouls. They’re keeping us here.” His voice was hoarse and he seemed to be struggling to form sentences. Hide wondered what Aogiri had done to him, and wondered what was waiting on the other side of the steel door for Hide himself. 

  


…...

  


Takizawa realized that he hadn’t spoken except to scream and beg in days. Rather, a week now, or more than a week. He wasn’t certain anymore. In any case the words stumbled over his tongue and his voice rasped in his throat. Complicating the issue was the fact that he could hardly figure out how to explain to Hide what was happening. What could he say to possibly make the situation better? How could he possibly tell Hide what Eto would be planning once she found out that Hide had awoken?

Takizawa tried his best to explain but Hide’s expression remained shocked. He was weeping. Takizawa watched as Hide’s hands went to his face and felt the growth there. 

“RC cell oversecretion disease,” Hide mumbled. “My stomach hurts.” He pushed his hands under his hospital gown and felt along his bandaged stomach. 

“Listen--I hear footsteps outside,” Takizawa interrupted. He could hear the soft padding of feet drawing near the door. “Pretend to still be asleep,” he hissed. Hide nodded, and fell back on the blankets. 

The door clanged open and Eto stepped through. She did not close the door behind her.

“Seidou!” she exclaimed. “How good to see you!” 

She did not go to Takizawa, however. Takizawa watched her nervously as she stood over Hide’s limp form. She stared down at Hide, then looked to Takizawa.

“I want you to know, Seidou,” she kicked Hide fiercely in the stomach. He screamed and curled into a ball, and Takizawa winced. “That I have eyes and ears everywhere!” 

Eto grasped the front of Hide’s hospital gown and dragged him into a sitting position. She knelt down before him. Takizawa could see the pain still contorting his face.

“My name is Eto,” she cooed, “and you’re going to come with me.” Eto stood and easily picked up Hide. She hoisted him into her arms and held him bridal-style. 

Hide looked at Takizawa. His features were warped with fear and pain. They both knew exactly what was coming. 

  


……

  


“This is very disappointing, Hide.” Eto shook her head. Hide was collapsed on the floor, chained, with his bandages unraveled in a pile around his body and his hospital gown discarded on the concrete floor. The wounds were still red, raw, and half-healed. “I knew you were weak, but I thought you might at least be able to heal. We won’t be able to have very much fun together, unfortunately.” 

She stroked the growth on the side of his face. “Well, this is horrible. I think I’ll cut it off!” She exclaimed. 

Eto did not like to use knives. Her kagune unfurled behind her and arced over her head so the point of it touched Hide’s cheek. 

“Please,” Hide whispered. His voice was thick with oncoming tears. 

“Oh! Begging won’t help you,” Eto said with a smile. “It’s best not to try.” 

Her kagune dug into his skin. Hide screamed. 

With surgical precision Eto slipped her kagune under the growth on Hide’s face and began to pry it up. It had hooked into his skin, and Hide squeezed his eyes shut to keep the blood out. As she continued to dig the blood seeped into his open, screaming mouth. Eto realized quickly that the hardest part to cut away would be the root of it: the thick deposit of RC cells that cut open his face and squeezed out of the wound. Eto cut as close to the wound as she could, sawing through the kagune tissue, and then continued to peel up the plate from Hide’s face. It came loose, remaining only partially hooked into Hide’s skin, and she tugged it off. Hide screamed as his flesh came away with the plate of tissue. 

“Well done!” Eto exclaimed. She tossed the plate of kagune off to the side and used her fingers to wipe the blood from beneath Hide’s eyes. “Oh, it’s still bleeding so much. Hm…” she considered for a moment, then knelt down to Hide’s face and began to lick the blood off of his flesh. He whimpered as his wound stung. 

Once she had cleaned the blood away, Eto sat up.   
“I really can’t do much more with you today,” she lamented. “You are so, so weak. Kanou will be disappointed that his experiment failed. We’re all very disappointed. I could eat you right now and it wouldn’t matter! I won’t, though, not today!”

Eto smiled broadly. Her teeth were red with his blood.


	3. free

  


“She’s going to kill me,” Hide rasped. His throat was dry and sore despite the water that Tatara had brought along with food for Takizawa. There was no human food for Hide, and he felt weak and shaky. 

Takizawa remained silent. They both knew it was true. 

“She won’t kill me quickly. I still have time,” Hide continued. He gestured for Takizawa to lean in close, and he did. Hide spoke directly into his ear. “We need to get out of here,” Hide whispered. He hoped they were being quiet enough to evade Eto’s “ears.” 

Takizawa lifted his lips to Hide’s ear and whispered his response: “They’ll come after me if I escape. They want me.”

Hide’s shoulders fell. He tried to keep his expression calm. He couldn’t read Takizawa’s face; the man had been expressive at one time, but now his face was slack and blank regardless of what he said.

Takizawa began to speak again.  
“But they might not come after you. I’ll help you escape,” he murmured. 

  


……

  


Eto sat heavily on Hide’s stomach. Pain filled his whole body and he squirmed and screamed. She smiled and brandished her kagune in front of his face. 

“I think we have a little surgical mishap,” she dragged her kagune along his bare stomach. “I spoke to Dr. Kanou, and he thinks that your stomach pain is because your body is rejecting the kakuhou. So interesting! In any case, you’ll be dead within a week or two! So we don’t have much time to enjoy ourselves before that happens.” 

Hide’s mind was too exhausted with pain to process what she was saying. He understood that he would die soon. He never thought that he would choose death over life, but it was beginning to look more and more appealing. 

“So let’s get started,” Eto said. She tapped her fingers to her lips thoughtfully. “Ah, I know.”

She lowered her kagune to the skin of his left arm and drew a long gash through the flesh. Hide screamed out loud, his mind once again awash with agony. She set her kagune to his skin again and drew another cut parallel to the first just below it. Blood streamed freely from the wounds onto the floor; Hide could feel it sticking to his skin and seeping under his back. Eto continued to cut lines into the outside of his arm all the way down to his elbow. By the time she pulled her kagune away from his skin, Hide had screamed himself hoarse and was completely limp on the floor.

“I have to do it carefully with you, see,” she explained. “You’re so weak, I have to make sure you don’t pass out in the middle of it when I’m working. I think I’m done with you today. I’ll eat you soon, Hide.” 

Eto stood up and began to unchain Hide’s arms and legs. Even as she freed him, he could not move. He remained sprawled on the floor. Pain clouded his vision and garbled his thoughts. Exhaustion had hooked itself into the backs of his eyelids and was drawing him towards unconsciousness. He would have passed out if not for the brutal stinging pain in his arm. That was just how Eto wanted it, he thought.

Eto leaned over Hide’s body, looking down at his face with a smile. But in a moment of mental haze he could have sworn the face belonged to someone else: someone with dark hair and eyes so bright and curious that Hide couldn’t help but smile when Kaneki looked at him. 

“Kaneki,” he mumbled. Kaneki extended a hand and stroked Hide’s cheek. 

“Kaneki?” Eto exclaimed. Her voice sliced through Hide’s hallucination; her hand was sticky with blood on his face. “Kaneki isn’t coming to help you, Hide. Kaneki left you for dead down in the sewers. We found you because he left you there.” She smiled, and grasped Hide’s shoulders, then pulled him up into a sitting position. Eto knelt so she could speak to Hide’s face, and gripped his chin to steady his woozy head. 

“No one is coming to help you, Hide,” she promised. “No one at all.”

  


……

  


Takizawa had cleaned Hide’s wounds as much as he could with a blanket and some water, but they didn’t have any proper bandages to wrap up Hide’s arm or his scabbed face. Blood seeped slowly from the cuts on his arm, and Hide let it drip periodically onto the floor. 

“ _We have to go_ ,” Hide mouthed. “ _Today._ ”

There was a polite knock at the door, and they both stiffened. Eto burst in. 

“Seidou! Come with me!” she exclaimed. Takizawa scrambled to his feet. He shot a look back at Hide, and nodded as slightly as he could. He had come to believe that as long as Hide survived, so would he. 

Eto took Takizawa’s elbow and guided him gently out of the cell. She shut the door behind them, and released Takizawa’s arm. 

“You’re free to go,” she announced. She gestured down the length of the hallway. 

“Free?” he asked hesitantly.

“Well, Takizawa,” she beamed at him. “I know you won’t leave us. If you do, there will be consequences,” she warned.

Takizawa knew that she was right. Where could he possibly go where Aogiri couldn’t find him? Where they couldn’t find his family? It was best, he thought, if he let everyone keep thinking he was dead. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice called out quietly. It was Eto’s voice, and she promised that they could make Takizawa the best. Together. 

Takizawa shook his head. Eto turned and began to walk down the hallway. 

Takizawa waited until she was gone, and then followed where she had walked. At the end of the doorway he found a flight of stairs going up, and he climbed them to the highest landing, where he found a door. The door lead him to a huge warehouse. Eto must have left the stairwell on one of the lower landings, because he was entirely alone in the empty building. The only thing in the entire warehouse was a stack of pallets and a forklift parked in one corner.

Could he really be free just to leave? Takizawa crossed the concrete floor of the warehouse, cold on his bare feet, until he reached a door. He pulled it open and stumbled out into a light so bright he had to close his eyes and then blink away the strands of black in his vision. 

He was in an alley in daylight. The sun warmed his neck and the tops of his feet and burned his eyes. Takizawa fell to his knees and began to laugh hysterically. After so many days of confinement underground, the sun felt rapturously good on his skin. He screamed his laughter and it echoed in the alleyway.

After his laughter subsided, his first thought was of Hide. He couldn’t be sure when he could get another moment alone like this. He didn’t know what Aogiri would expect for him in terms of responsibilities, but he was certain that they wouldn’t let him alone unattended frequently. 

Takizawa slipped back inside and hurried down to the basement where he had been imprisoned. He stood in front of the cell and tugged up his shirt so it wouldn’t tear when he released his kagune. He released his kagune, and squeezed the tip of it between the door and the wall. He pried the lock open, and the door popped ajar. 

Hide looked up in surprise. He smiled.

  


……

  


Ideally they would have kept moving. Hide would have disappeared into the city, hopping from hiding place to hiding place. Ideally, he would have lost himself in the crowds and the churn of the city. Ideally, Hide would have been strong enough to make it to the CCG.

The situation was far from ideal. Takizawa carried Hide, wrapped in blankets, into an abandoned construction site. It was a half-built office building with only two stories, but there was no construction equipment parked outside. There appeared to be someone living on the first floor, so Takizawa carried Hide up a flight of concrete steps to the second floor, and set him down in a corner. 

“Thank you,” Hide said when Takizawa helped him settle against the wall. 

“You’re welcome,” Takizawa replied. “You don’t have to thank me.”

“Of course I do. You got me out of there,” Hide said, surprised. 

Takizawa stayed quiet for a moment. “So what’s our plan?” he asked, changing the subject. “You need food and water and medical attention, and you can’t get it by yourself.”

Hide was glad that Takizawa had brought it up, because he didn’t want to ask for more from the person who had just saved his life.

“Yeah, and you need to go back there before Aogiri finds us,” Hide countered.

Takizawa paused. “I can come back tomorrow night. I’ll bring food. As long as they don’t suspect that I’m gone...it should at least buy you some time. Make it less urgent for them to come find you.”

Hide nodded. “Okay. Tomorrow night.”

“Will you be safe?” Takizawa asked.

“Safer than I was in there,” Hide responded with a smile. Takizawa nodded, and he stood to leave. Hide watched him turn away, but before he left he turned back to Hide.

“If you survive all of this,” Takizawa began, “where will you go?”

Hide thought, first, of Kaneki. 

“I’ll go home, I guess,” he said. Takizawa nodded, and Hide got the sense that that wasn’t the answer he was looking for. 

  


…...

  


The next night Takizawa slipped out of the Aogiri base again and ran back to the construction site. He hurried up the stairs to the second floor office where Hide was hiding out. He was still barefoot and the sidewalk scratched at the soles of his feet. It had grown cold at night, and Takizawa hoped that Hide was not too cold. 

Takizawa found Hide huddled under a blanket in the corner of the office. At first Takizawa thought he might be dead, but as he heard Takizawa coming he stirred and looked up.

“Takizawa,” he greeted hoarsely. As Takizawa neared, he could see that Hide’s lips were stained red with blood he had coughed up. The red growth was creeping back over his cheek, too, and scratching up the scabs as it grew. Blood flecked one side of his face, but the other was clean and normal, albeit pale, and brightened with a smile. Takizawa couldn’t help but smile back. 

“I came back to check on you before I go and find you some food,” Takizawa explained. He knelt in front of Hide. Up close, he could hear a rumble in Hide’s stomach. Hide would never admit how hungry he was, Takizawa knew, but he needed to get him some food soon or else he would be at an even greater risk of death. As it was, they needed to get him some help soon.

“Thank you,” Hide replied. Takizawa noticed that his smile looked strained, but he kept smiling. “On the bright side, it’s nice to be able to breathe air that doesn’t smell like corpses. And during the day the sunshine is amazing, right?”

“Yeah,” Takizawa replied, looking away. He couldn’t figure out what more to say. He was surprised that Hide managed to find something good in his situation; Takizawa couldn’t decide whether to be suspicious of or heartened by his optimism. 

“Before you go, you have some blood on your face,” Hide pointed out. Takizawa swiped at his cheeks with his fingers. “Wait, I’ll get it.”

Hide reached out and rubbed his thumb over Takizawa’s cheekbone. The pad of his finger was soft and cold. Takizawa felt the stickiness of blood as he rubbed the stain away. He was surprised by Hide’s casualness in regards to the intimate gesture, but Takizawa had gone weeks without a touch so gentle, and he found himself wishing Hide would just draw him into his arms.

“There you go,” Hide concluded. He drew his hand back and wiped his thumb on the blanket. 

“I should go now,” Takizawa said. He stood up quickly and walked away, trying to clear his mind of the thought of Hide’s embrace.

  


……

  


Takizawa stood in the snack aisle of the drug store hoping that no one would notice he wasn’t wearing any shoes. His filthy feet left black footprints on the gray linoleum floor in a trail from the door to where he stood. The two cashiers had stared at him when he walked in, but either they hadn’t noticed his failure to comply with the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” rule or they were too fed up with the late-night shift to care. 

Takizawa hoped that they’d have an equally uncaring gaze when he left the store, because he was currently stuffing the pockets of his sweatpants with packs of nuts and cookies. Once his pockets were full, he crossed the store to the first aid aisle and stuffed rolls of gauze and a couple of cloth bandages into the waistband of his pants. He gave up on hiding the water bottles he grabbed next, opting instead to tuck them under his shoulders and hope that the cashiers conveniently looked away as he was trying to leave. 

Feeling absolutely ridiculous, Takizawa made a break for the exit. He clutched at his pants so as not to drop any of the stolen items. He tried to walk as normally and inconspicuously as possible to the exit, but he found himself practically waddling. By the time he reached the door, both of the cashiers were staring at him again. One of them opened their mouth to speak, maybe to call out and demand that he return the items, but Takizawa was running before he could find out. He raced back to the construction site, pausing to gather the bandages into his hands so he could run better.

At the construction site, Hide looked up hopefully and watched him approach. Takizawa knelt down in front of Hide and emptied his pockets. The packages of nuts and cookies spilled onto the floor. Takizawa could see Hide’s eyes light up as he enthusiastically reached for a bag of cookies and tore it open with his teeth. He began to eat as ferociously as Takizawa did when Eto have him fresh meat.

“Thank you,” he said once he had swallowed a mouthful of mini cookies. “How did you know that chocolate chip is my favorite?”

Takizawa looked at him blankly, and after a second Hide cracked a smile. He returned to eating. 

“Really, thank you,” he said again.

“You’re welcome,” Takizawa replied. Of course Hide was welcome. As long as he survived, Takizawa survived. It went beyond that, though: Takizawa would never have abandoned anyone in the Aogiri base, let alone a coworker who could have been a friend if they had more time. And let alone someone who had suffered beside him for days. They were bound by something like shared misery or shared perseverance. 

Hide finished off the bag of cookies and took a long drink from one of the bottles of water. 

“Careful, or you’ll make yourself sick,” Takizawa warned.

“I’m already sick,” Hide countered with a grin, and Takizawa remained silent. “Will you help me with my bandages?” he asked. Hide shrugged the blanket off to reveal his sliced-up arm. Several of the scabs were again leaking blood. 

Takizawa carefully set to bandaging Hide’s arm. He made a point not to make eye contact with Hide while he was leaning in so close to his body and touching his skin. He wrapped Hide’s arm first in gauze and then unrolled one of the stretchy cloth bandages over it. 

“We need to get you to a hospital soon,” Takizawa said once he had finished wrapping Hide’s wounds and Hide returned to eating. 

“They’ll find us if we do, won’t they?” Hide asked.

“Maybe,” Takizawa said, and he genuinely wasn’t sure. If Aogiri caught them, Hide would be dead in a second. If they waited too long to get Hide to a hospital, he could die anyway.

“Let’s wait until tomorrow night. Then you take me to a hospital and leave me there. Don’t stay there with me. If I get out, I’ll go to the CCG.”

“You won’t have anyone to defend you if they come,” Takizawa reminded him.

“If they come, you’d be dead too,” Hide replied sternly. It was a gamble. Takizawa didn’t know whether Aogiri would expend the effort to track down Hide and kill him. Maybe, because he knew the location of their base; maybe not, if they didn’t care enough about a failed experiment who was most likely going to die anyway. 

Takizawa nodded. “Tomorrow,” he said. Privately, he understood that Hide might not make it to tomorrow. He wondered what he would do once Hide was gone. 


	4. pain

Something was different. That day Takizawa didn’t struggle. Eto dug her fingers into his flesh, deep, pressing into his abdomen up to her second knuckle. Her nails were blunt, but she was strong enough to break the skin and bury deep into his body. He could feel her fingers wriggling inside of him and how his body healed up around them. He didn’t scream; the pain was nothing. It washed over his body but it didn’t rush into his brain, all-consuming, like it had in the past. This time, he swam in the pain; he didn’t drown in it. _This_ was survival.  
  
The pain had a certainty to it. Lately all Takizawa could count on was pain and he realized, then, that for his entire life pain had been the thing to which he returned. Good times came and went, but an undercurrent of pain always flowed under his skin and, inevitably, it rushed to the surface again and again. Hide...he was Takizawa’s hope, but just like everything he would be gone soon, Takizawa knew. Takizawa could count on pain and Eto, who was the master of it. This was hope.  
  
Takizawa welcomed Eto and her possession. He welcomed her into his cells. There was nothing he could do about it anymore and he didn’t want to. She was a part of him, she owned him, and he no longer minded. The CCG had just used him and discarded him but she could help him be the best. She wanted him to be the best, unlike all those people who had wanted him to fail before. So he let her toy with his body because it was all a part of her plan: she, who loved him; she, who was his god.  
“You’re almost ready now!” she exclaimed at the end of that session, when she had withdrawn her fingers and the wounds had healed. He knew it, too: his silence at the pain was the sign of his success. Takizawa touched his stomach and felt the smooth skin where the wound had been. He was perfect--or, almost perfect. Almost there. He wondered what Eto would do to truly make him perfect. He smiled. That day, Eto taught him a lesson: _this_ was hope.

……

When Takizawa returned to the construction site that night he found Hide’s blanket discarded in a pile along with food wrappers. His water bottle had tipped over and a puddle on the ground had yet to dry.  
Takizawa knew, then. He could feel it in his stomach. He would search, and the first place he thought to go was back to Aogiri.  
It had all been too easy.

……

Takizawa rushed into the warehouse.  
Eto stood in the middle of the floor dressed in her long reddish-purple cloak. The darkness of the warehouse gaped open like the mouth of a dog. Takizawa could see that something was sprawled at her feet. His stomach churned with terrified certainty.  
  
“Seidou!” Eto crowed. “I’m so happy to see you. I brought you a gift! I thought you’d want your friend back home with us!”  
Takizawa approached her slowly. Eto swept her arms up to the sky.  
  
“Come look!” she exclaimed. As Takizawa drew nearer he saw the head of the collapsed figure: a shaggy mop of bleached hair growing out dark at the roots. Hide’s face was turned away from him.  
  
Eto kicked Hide’s body in the stomach and he flopped over onto his back. A red line slashed across his throat. His dark eyes were open, blank and unseeing.  
Takizawa remained silent. He looked at Hide’s face, completely slack and devoid of emotion, and felt an emptiness.  
Before Takizawa could move, Eto’s hand was around his throat, applying enough pressure to let him know she could crush him right then but not enough to actually hurt him.  
  
“Remember, Seidou,” she sing-songed. “That I have eyes and ears _everywhere._ ”  
  
She squeezed Takizawa’s throat harder for a moment, and then dropped him. He stumbled back and she was already walking away. He understood, then, that she had known the whole time, that the whole time she had only let Hide escape. It was all part of her plan to train him. Which meant he was perfect now, he was all complete, all made in her image.  
  
Takizawa looked down at Hide’s body and studied the features that would never move again: the eyes that would never blink, the mouth that would never curve into another smile. Takizawa grinned as he appraised the body of his dead friend. He couldn’t help it--it was funny. It was funny that he had dared to care about anyone!


End file.
